People

Faculty, scientists, and activists who have shared their research and expertise with students as part of theMaternal and Infant Health in Morocco: Women’s Rights and Family in Islam programinclude:

Angel Foster

Dr. Angel Foster is the Echo’s Endowed Chair of Women’s Health Research at the University of Ottawa and an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences. A 1996 Rhodes Scholar, she received her Doctor of Philosophy degree (D.Phil.) in Middle Eastern studies from Oxford University. Grounded in the fields of medical anthropology and public health, her research focused on women’s comprehensive health care in Tunisia. Dr. Foster also holds a Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degree from Harvard Medical School. Dr. Foster has conducted mixed-methods research on women’s health in Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, the Thai/Burma border, Tunisia, and the US. She is the co-editor of Emergency Contraception: The Story of a Global Reproductive Technology.

Rajae El Aouad

Dr.Rajae El Aouad is the former Director of the National Institute of Hygiene of Morocco. She is resident member of the Hassan II Academy of Sciences and Technology (HIIAST). She also holds the position of Senior Professor of Immunology at the School of Medicine of Rabat. Rajae holds a Doctorate in Medical studies (Rabat, Morocco), a Master of Science (Montpellier, France) and a Master of Health Policy and Management (Paris, France). Rajae worked at the National Institute of Hygiene for 25 years, where she set up several National Reference Centres. She established the Influenza Surveillance Program and a WHO National Influenza Center in 1996. She strengthened its activities through a Cooperative Agreement with the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention-USA (2007-2011, renewed for 2012-2016) and was named to the Women in Science Hall of Fame by the U.S. Department of State in 2012.

Aicha Ech-Channa is an advocate for women’s rights – and particularly those of young unmarried mothers – in Morocco and the founder of Association Solidarité Feminine (ASF), which provides childcare, job and life skills training, and job placement services. While inspired by Islamic values of equality, human dignity, and compassion, ASF does not describe itself as ‘faith-based.’ After facing challenges from some Muslim clerics, Ech-Channa and ASF (with support from the Moroccan royal family) successfully launched a public conversation over Morocco’s family law that resulted in a new code that combines positive values and social benefits of religion and tradition with changing norms. Before founding ASF she worked in the Moroccan Ministry of Social Affairs. Ech-Channa was awarded the prestigious $1 million Opus Prize in 2009, which is given in recognition of extraordinary work in fighting poverty.

Khadija Elmadmad

Khadija Elmadmad is the UNESCO Chair of Migration and Human Rights at Hasan II University in Ain Chok. She is also an attorney, the President of the Casablanca Centre on Migration and Humanitarian Laws (CERMEDH)and the Legal Coordinator for Morocco of The Euro-Mediterranean Consortium for Applied Research on International Migration (CARIM) of the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence. She is also a Member of the Scientific Board of the Africa Governance Monitoring and Advocacy Project (AfriMAP) in London. She has published extensively about Public Law, International Law, Human Rights, Refugee and Migration Law, International Humanitarian Law, and Migration Issues in Islam and Morocco.

Mohammed Akrim

Dr. Mohammed Akrim is Docteur-Es-Sciences and the Director of the Moroccan National Laboratory of Molecular Biology at the Institut National d’Hygiène du Maroc in Rabat, Morocco. Among other projects, his laboratory provides official national statistics for the epidemiology, evolution, and prevalence oftuberculosis in Morocco, and has producedseveral studies. The laboratory also considersmethods of detectionand treatment for tuberculosis infection and makes recommendations to the Moroccan Ministry of Health.

Stephanie Willman Bordat

Stephanie Willman Bordathas been the director of Global Rights’ Morocco-based office since its creation in 2000. She is responsible for the design and implementation of projects in collaboration with local NGOs and lawyers in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia that enhance knowledge of legal and human rights among illiterate and semi-literate women; monitor and document women’s rights violations in the formal justice system; advocate for violence-against-women legislation; encourage the use of strategic litigation; and facilitate human rights advocacy by local activists at the international level. She was a Fulbright Scholar at the Université Mohammed V in Rabat, where she studied Islamic family law, personal status codes, and the status of women in Morocco. She holds law degrees with honors from both Columbia Law School in New York and the Université Paris I-Sorbonne in France.

Fatiha Rhoufrani

Dr. Fatiha Rhoufrani is the President of the Association de Lutte Contre le SIDA in Rabat and a physician of the Moroccan Ministry of Health. Dr. Ghoufrani has conducted several studies, including a study of sub-Saharan migrants for the NIH and a survey of Moroccan sex-workers and their knowledge about HIV and practices. Under her leadership, ALCS trains sub-Saharan African asylum-seekers, imams, prostitutes, MSM, truck drivers, and IV drug users as peer AIDS educators. ALCS has undertaken a series of public information campaigns and education campaigns that target vulnerable groups, for example truck drivers. ALCS also has an anonymous web information line and provides medical information via texting, which is especially popular with young people.

Peggy McClure

Peggy McClure is the Country Director for the U.S. Peace Corps in Morocco. She served as a Peace Corps Volunteer health educator in Togo in the early 1970s after graduating from Stanford University. On her return to the US, she went to graduate school at The Ohio State University receiving an Masters of Science in Preventive Medicine from the College of Medicine. Peggy worked for a health systems agency which planned for south central Alaska, after which she attended the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. After receiving her MBA, Peggy moved to Portland, Oregon where she had a 20-year career with Kaiser Permanente. On retirement from KP, she re-entered Peace Corps service.

Ellen Amster

Dr. Ellen Amsteris the Hannah Chair in the History of Medicine at McMaster University and associate professor in the Departments of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics and the Department of History, specializing in Islamic and French medicines. A Fulbright scholar and a Chateaubriand scholar of the government of France, she received her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2003. Her research includes global health and healing in Morocco, maternal and infant health, and Sufism. She created theMaternal and Infant Health in Moroccoprogram with grant support from a U.S. Department of Education Grant to UWM (UISFL), and the course is an extension of her field research for the 2013 book,Medicine and the Saints: Science, Islam, and the Colonial Encounter in Morocco, 1877-1956 (University of Texas Press). She has been a simultaneous translator for an ocular surgery mission of the international NGO ORBIS in Morocco, and a researcher at the National Institute of Hygiene in Morocco.

Jenny Kehl

Jenny R. Kehl is the Lynde B. Uihlein Endowed Chair and Director of the Center for Water Policy and Associate Professor in the School of Freshwater Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Jenny received her Ph.D. in International Political Economy and Comparative Development from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2003. Her research interests include international political economy and comparative development, resolution of water resource allocation issues in Africa and Asia, and transboundary conflict over water resources.

Cloe Medina Erickson is the founder and president of the Atlas Cultural Foundation. She holds a Master of Architecture and Bachelor of Environmental Design from Montana State University, Bozeman. After graduation she started an architecture consulting business which allowed her the flexibility to pursue another passion of hers, the Arabic language. Having studied with schools in Morocco, Egypt, and Yemen, Cloe is fluent in Modern Standard Arabic.

Caroline Seymour-Jorn

Caroline Seymour-Jorn is Associate Professor in the Department of French, Italian, and Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, specializing in Arabic language and literature and the anthropology of the Middle East. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in anthropology. Her book,Cultural Criticism in Egyptian Women’s Writing (Syracuse University Press, 2011), engages both literature and interviews with Egyptian women writers. Caroline was the co-leader of the program in 2013.

Genevieve Chabot

Genevieve Chabot is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Iqra Fund, an NGO dedicated to increasing the access to education for girls in Northern Pakistan through a variety of community education initiatives, scholarships, girl-friendly school environments, preschools and early childhood education, tutoring, libraries, and development for teachers. Genevieve received her Ph.D. in Education and has worked at the Central Asia Institute.

Joe Phillips

Joe Phillips was born and raised in St. Paul, MN. He received his BA from the University of California Santa Cruz, during which he studied abroad for a year at the American University in Cairo. He received his MS and MBA from the American University in Washington, DC. He has been Country Director for AMIDEAST Morocco since 2004.

Amel Mili

Amel Mili holds a JD in Private Law from the Law School of Tunis and a Master’s in Public Administration from The University of Tunis. She also holds a Master’s and a PhD in Global Affairs/ Political Science from Rutgers University, Newark. From 1991 to 2009, Amel served as a Magistrate in the Administrative Tribunal of Tunisia, an institution that is similar to France’s Conseil d’Etat, in that it acts as a legal adviser to the state and rules on cases opposing citizens to state institutions. She is currently the director of the Lauder Arabic Language and Culture Program at the University of Pennsylvania.

Karla Bartholomew

Karla Bartholomew is Assistant Professor of Public Health Policy at the Zilber School of Public Health of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She received her PhD in Policy Development and Program Evaluation from Vanderbilt University. Her research interests include public health law and the intersection of public policy and public health. She served as a co-leader of the program in 2012.